Social art projects Artist grants

Art is Long, Life is ShortSupport for this work is provided by a Rocket Grant project award, a program of the Charlotte Street Foundation and the University of Kansas Spencer Museum of Art. Funding is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Using comic book styling, animation, audio and audience participation, the artists will create webisodes that portray the daily struggles of teens living at risk.

The webisodes will be posted on www.literatiplayers.com and the public will have the opportunity to view, interact and choose the outcome of the story by contributing to the conversation on Facebook and by voting on alternate endings. Because they will be invested in each character, the audience will be able to experience first-hand how different choices lead to unique and life-altering events.

After the polling is closed, the team will create the final act(s) of the story using the results of the public vote. They will then release the final, completed, animated short to its following of online viewers. (2012)

One As Many - Many As OneSupport for this work was funded by an Inspiration Grant through the ArtsKC Fund by Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City.

A collaboration between Michele Fritz and artist Margaret Shelby.The installation component of this project consisted of hundreds of small clay pinch pots, each hand built using a technique dating back 20,000 years. In the interior of each pot is placed a piece of glass. In the heat of the firing process the glass melts and forms what appears to be a glistening pool of color, suggesting an internal life force. This fact is intentional. Yes, each pot has it's own specific integrity as no two could possibly be exactly alike, but one pinch pot alone is frankly common and ignorable. Hundreds of them, however, brought together and installed in a single concentrated space take on dimensions and meanings that each viewer must interpret for themselves. It is too tempting to resist pointing out the connection between our installation concept for "One as Many/Many as One" and several recent city wide symposiums, where one keynote speaker asserted the need for artists, arts organizations and supporters to "become an army" of one.An additional but vital component of this project was to ask as many members of our individual communities as possible to make one (or more) of the pinch pots. Again, the need and rewards for community involvement is in this way made tangible. To make enough pots in the time allowed, to succeed; we simply need this help.

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